Chapter 12
Socioemotional Development in Early Adulthood
Stability and Change from Childhood to
Adulthood
 For adults, socioemotional development revolves
around adaptively integrating our emotional
experiences into enjoyable relationships with
others on a daily basis
 The first 20 years of life are not meaningless in
predicting an adult’s socioemotional life
 Attachment plays an important part in socioemotional
development
Stability and Change from Childhood to
Adulthood
 Adult’s attachment is categorized as secure, avoidant, or
anxious:
 Secure attachment style
 Adults have positive views of relationships
 Avoidant attachment style
 Adults are hesitant to get involved in romantic relationships
 Anxious attachment style
 Adults demand closeness, are less trusting, and more emotional,
jealous, and possessive
Love and Close Relationships
 Love -- vast and complex territory of human
behavior, spanning a range of relationships that
includes friendship, romantic love, affectionate love,
and consummate love
 intimacy -- self-disclosure and the sharing of private thoughts
Erikson’s Stage: Intimacy Versus
Isolation
 After individuals are well on their way to establishing
stable and successful identities, they enter the sixth
developmental stage, which is intimacy versus isolation
 Finding oneself by losing oneself in another person
 If a person fails to develop an intimate relationship in
early adulthood, according to Erikson, isolation results
 Gateways to attraction
 Exclusion criteria
Intimacy and Independence
 Development in early adulthood often involves
balancing intimacy and commitment with
independence and freedom
 Intimacy and commitment, and independence
and freedom are important themes of
development that are worked and reworked
throughout the adult years
Friendship
 Friendship plays an important role in development
throughout the human life span
 Women have more close friends and their friendships involve more
self-disclosure and exchange of mutual support
 Talk is central to their relationships
 Women share many aspects of their experiences, thoughts, and
feelings
Romantic Love
 Some friendships evolve into romantic love
 Also called passionate love, or eros
 Romantic love has strong components of
sexuality and infatuation
 Often predominates in the early part of a love relationship
 Sexual desire is the most important ingredient of romantic love
Affectionate Love
 Affectionate love -- type of love that occurs when someone
desires to have the other person near and has a deep, caring
affection for the person
 also called companionate love
 As love matures, passion tends to give way to affection
Consummate Love and Sternberg’s
Triarchic Theory
 Sternberg proposed a triarchic theory of love in
which love can be thought of as a triangle with three
main dimensions—passion, intimacy, and
commitment
 Passion is physical and sexual attraction to another
 Intimacy relates to the emotional feelings of warmth, closeness, and
sharing in a relationship
 Commitment is the cognitive appraisal of the relationship and the
intent to maintain the relationship
Components of love
 Triangular model of love – Sternberg (1988)
 Liking – Intimacy only
 Companionate love – Intimacy + Commitment
 Empty love – Commitment only
 Fatuous love – Commitment + Passion
 Infatuation – Passion only
 Romantic love – Passion + Intimacy
 Consummate love – Passion + Intimacy + Commitment
Adult Lifestyles: Single Adults
 More adults are remaining single longer today
 In the last 30 years, there has been a dramatic rise in the percentage
of single adults
 Advantages
 Freedom to make decisions about one’s life course, pursue one’s
own schedule, privacy
 Common problems
 Loneliness
 Forming intimate relationships with other adults
 Finding a niche in a society that is marriage-oriented
Cohabitation
 Cohabitation -- living together in a sexual
relationship without being married
 cohabitation has changed
 many couples view their cohabitation as an ongoing lifestyle
 Disadvantages
 Disapproval by parents
 Difficulty owning property jointly
 Legal rights on the dissolution of the relationship are less
certain
 Elevated risk of partner violence
Intimacy
 Domestic violence
 Common couple violence
 Intimate terrorism
 Change process – Prochaska & DeClemente
 Precontemplation
 Contemplation
 Preparation
 Action
 Maintenance
 Relapse
Marriage
 Traditional marriage
 Egalitarian marriage
 Social exchange theory
Married Adults
 Changing norm of male-female equality means marital
relationships are more fragile and intense
 More than 90 percent of U.S. women still marry at
some point in their lives; projections indicate that in
the future this rate will drop into 80–90 percent range
 Marriages in adolescence are more likely to end in
divorce than marriages in adulthood
 Average duration of a marriage in the United States is
currently just over nine years
The Benefits of a Good Marriage
 Individuals who are happily married live longer,
healthier lives than either divorced individuals or
those who are unhappily married
 People in unhappy marriages may experience
numerous physical ailments, such as high blood
pressure and heart disease, as well as
psychological problems such as anxiety,
depression, and substance abuse
Discussion
 Why do people divorce?
 How are children affected by divorce? Remarriage?
 What do you think about nonbiological parenting?
 Is it riskier than biological parenting?
Divorced Adults
 Increases in divorce are correlated with youthful
marriage, low educational level, low income, not
having a religious affiliation, divorced parents, having
a baby before marriage
 These characteristics also increase the likelihood of
divorce:
 Alcoholism, psychological problems, domestic violence, infidelity,
and inadequate division of household labor
Strategies for Divorced Adults
 Hetherington recommends these:
 Think of divorce as a chance to grow personally and to develop
more positive relationships
 Make decisions carefully
 Focus more on the future than the past
 Use your strengths and resources to cope with difficulties
 Don’t expect to be successful and happy in everything you do
Remarried Adults
 Divorced adults remarry within three years after
their divorce
Men remarry sooner than women
Men with higher incomes are more likely to remarry
Remarriage occurs sooner for partners who initiate a divorce
Adults who get remarried have a lower level of mental health
(depression)
 Financial status improves after remarrying
 More shared decision making
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Gay and Lesbian Adults
 The legal and social context of marriage creates barriers to
breaking up that do not exist for same-sex partners
 But in other ways, researchers have found that gay and
lesbian relationships are similar to heterosexual relationships
in their satisfactions, loves, joys, and conflict
 Contrary to stereotypes, one partner is masculine and the
other feminine in only a small percentage of gay male and
lesbian couples
 Only a small segment has a large number of sexual partners
 Prefer a long-term, committed relationship
Social and Emotional Development
 Marriage
 Marital Satisfaction
 What do women want from their husbands? What do husbands want from
their wives?
 Marriage and emotional exchange:
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Gottman (1994) – predict divorce and time frame with 94% accuracy
Lab interactions – how handled disagreements: labeling action vs. person
Women want to talk about emotions, men not as much
Divorce: label person as dumb, insensitive…. Instead of action
Women use contempt or disgust – Men use stonewalling (closing up)
Most satisfied with marriage when conversations were 2-way and non-labeling
Making Marriage Work
 Gottman found a number of main principles
determining whether a marriage will work:
 Establishing love maps
 Nurturing fondness and admiration
 Turning toward each other instead of away
 Letting your partner influence you
 Creating shared meaning
Gender and Communication
 Tannen distinguishes two ways of
communications:
 Rapport talk -- language of conversation; a way of establishing
connections and negotiating relationships
 Report talk -- talk that is designed to give information; includes
public speaking
 Women enjoy rapport talk more than report talk; men’s lack of
interest in rapport talk bothers many women
 Men prefer to engage in report talk
Discussion: Having Children
 Think about your parents’ child rearing with regard to the
emphasis they placed on authoritarian, authoritative, permissive or
neglectful styles. Do you think you have or will have similar styles?
Why or why not?
 What do you look forward to or what do you enjoy most about
having children?
 What is your biggest fear about your ability to raise children?
 If you choose to have children, about how old do you want to be
(or how old were you) when you have (had) your first child? Why
this age and not an older or younger age?